Death Mages 5: Hypnotist Mini-Project

I want to create a class for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition — specifically, a death mage. Actually, I really want to make a whole bunch of them, but I’m thinking that I should restrain myself. It isn’t like I’m going to get much of a chance to use them, or see them in action. Still, it’s a nice thought, and I’d like to share with you some concepts I’m looking at right now. I’m starting with the “twin” concept behind Sleep and Death from Greek Mythology — Hypnos and Thanatos, respectively.

I’m thinking of making the hypnotist draw on the Shadow power source. It’ll be a controller, and the Arcane power source already has the wizard. I want it to fit a cool niche like the “tier 3” classes from the previous edition — for those of you who aren’t familiar with the tier system for classes (D&D 3.5), it’s where you’ll find most of the classes that are cool and useful that aren’t also overwhelmingly powerful (or frighteningly pathetic).

I took notes from reading on Wikipedia and Theoi.com and came up with a list of basic build concepts, based around Hypnos and his servants: Aergia (sloth and laziness), Morpheus (shaper of dreams), Icelos (crafter of nightmares), and Phantasos (fantastic and unreal). Powers will make use of necrotic, psychic, and possibly radiant, thunder, and/or poison damage types, and will likely make use of the sleep (duh), fear, illusion, and zone effects. I might hash out a quick 10-level thing and throw in some feats for good measure, and I might even do it this weekend. Maybe.